John: “Everyone Worked
Together”

John was working on his farm.
He hopped off his tractor to shut a gate and his tractor kept moving.

“I tried to jump on it, like
a dummy, and fell,” John said. “The tractor ran over me.”

He was immobilized with
broken bones, fractured ribs and a punctured lung.

“Somehow I was able to wiggle
around and get the cell phone out of my pocket,” he said. He called his wife,
and within an hour a medical helicopter was taking him to a short-term acute
care hospital.

He stayed there in the
Intensive Care Unit for seven weeks and was then admitted to Kindred Hospital.

“Really, by that point he was
still in critical condition,” his wife said. “He was totally dependent on a
ventilator to breathe. The people at the hospital had done everything they
could – we just needed to go somewhere where they had expertise in caring for
vent patients.”

Almost immediately, the
caregivers at Kindred
Hospital began
rehabilitation therapy and the process of weaning John from the ventilator.

“He had been on his back for
seven weeks, and gradually they kept having him do a little more at a time,”
his wife said. “The walking helped him strengthen his lungs.”

“I felt like I was making
progress, absolutely,” John said. “I’d heard of Kindred before, but I didn’t
really know what they did.”

Six weeks later, John was
released to home care to fully recover.

“By the time we left, he was
walking, breathing, swallowing and eating,” his wife said. “And it was the
teamwork that was great.”

“The care was excellent,”
John said. “Everybody knew what they were doing and everybody worked together.”